By A major cyber outage caused by a software upgrade disrupted operations at businesses, hospitals, broadcasters and banks overnight and has created chaos for air travelers stuck at airports across the globe as thousands of flights were grounded.
By 8:30 a.m. Friday, more than 100 flights in and out of the Twin Cities had been scrubbed at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and the number was likely to grow, said airport spokesman Jeff Lea.
“Just like with winter storms, if flights are canceled in other parts of the country, they don’t make it here,” he said. “We could see the domino effect.”
Lines at check-in counters and security checkpoints were already hundreds deep in Terminal 1. Lea advised travelers to communicate directly with their airline about their flight status as information displayed on airport flight monitors is “unreliable.”
Raj Datt, of Savage, along with his wife and daughter, was one of those in line, hoping to check in for a flight to Cancun. The family arrived at the airport at 6 a.m. and two hours later still could not use the baggage kiosks that were down.
“Now we’re being told because of the cybersecurity issue that we weren’t able to check in an hour prior, we have to go rebook our flight [with an agent.] We have a 9 o’clock take off. We are not looking good.”
Datt said most people have been understanding of the situation. “I haven’t seen anyone who was flipping out or anything.”
Hometown airline Sun Country canceled all flights scheduled to depart before 7 a.m. A while later, the airline said it was resuming some flights “but we are expecting additional cancellations today. Our ticket counter agents and customer reps cannot rebook travel now, because of downed systems.” Travelers should check their emails for updates, the airline said.
Delta Air Lines, the dominant carrier at MSP, said it resumed some departures around 7 a.m. after halting all flights earlier Friday. The airline had canceled 449 flights nationwide due to the outage, including 67 at MSP as of 8:45 a.m. The airline issued a travel waiver, allowing customers with flights Friday to make changes to their itineraries and rebook without incurring fare differences, provided they travel by July 24.
Many travelers were still in the dark as to whether their flight was on time, canceled or delayed. Rayna Johnson, of Grand Rapids, Minn., was trying to get to the FairWell music festival in Oregon with her family. They were only halfway down the line at a security checkpoint for a flight leaving in 30 minutes. Johnson said she didn’t have any information on what to do next if she missed the flight because the app wasn’t working.
Finesse Bartlett of West Palm Beach, Florida was trying to get home with her husband, two kids and a dog after spending a relaxing week at the lake visiting her husband’s hometown of Fergus Falls. Bartlett said her app was telling her the flight was on time, but has gotten now information on how to rebook.
“We’re chilling actually because we had a good long week (off). We’ve got the hotspot for them,” she said, gesturing at the kids playing games quietly on their phones.
Lines were moving slowly as only three of 26 kiosks in the baggage check area were working, she said an airport employee told her.
Nearly 2,400 flights at airports across the country had been called off by 9 a.m., according to the flight tracking website flightaware.com. More than 3,600 worldwide were canceled and more than 24,800 lights were delayed, the website said.
“Multiple airlines are reporting system outages that are impacting flights at MSP and nationwide. Please check with your airline for the latest flight status before leaving for the airport,” MSP said in a statement on X.
United and American said they also were impacted by the outage, but were slowly resuming operations. Lea said some flights operating as normal at MSP, but that it is an airline-by-airline situation. Frontier Airlines said access to check-in, boarding passes and some flights may be impacted.
“As we work to fully restore these systems, some flights are resuming. Many customers traveling today may experience delays,” United said in a statement.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was “closely monitoring” the cyber outage
“The FAA is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines. Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops until the issue is resolved,” the agency wrote in a post on social media.
The U.S. Department of Transportation reminded passengers to use flightrights.gov to “navigate what your airline’s responsibilities are to meet your needs as a passenger.”
Metro Transit said the outage has not impacted its service and buses and light-rail trains were running as scheduled, according to agency spokesman Drew Kerr.
The outage impacted other industries, too. WCCO posted early Friday that its broadcast was delayed due to the tech issues.
“The Microsoft outage is delaying the broadcast of WCCO This Morning. We’re working to rectify the issue and go live on the air ASAP,” the network said shortly after 5 a.m.
The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office said its IT staff was working to ensure “minimal impact” on services, but there has been on disruptions to 911 calls.
The mass outages affecting Microsoft systems appear to be related to a software update by the company CrowdStrike, a cyber security firm. The issue arose as the company was applying a software update which had a bug in it and had a “negative interaction,” the company’s CEO George Kurtz told NBC’s “Today” show.
“It wasn’t a cyber attack, it was related to a content update,” he told the news program. “We identified it quickly and remediated it. We are working with each and every customer to bring them back online. We are deeply sorry for the impact we have caused to customers, travelers, to anybody affected by this.”
Kurtz said the company will need to figure out what happened.
